Jacker shifted his feet uneasily, rolled his body, and, knowing that nothing could aggravate his offence, answered sullenly: 

‘Oh, dry up!’

Mr. Ham grinned at the boy in silence for a few moments, and then returned to his high stool and desk.  Mr. Ham never made the slightest effort to maintain before his scholars that dignity which is supposed to be essential to the success of a pedagogue.  In addressing the boys he used their correct names, or the nicknames liberally bestowed upon them by their mates, indiscriminately, and showed no resentment whatever when he heard himself alluded to as Jo, or Hamlet, or the Beetle, his most frequent appellations in the playground.  He kept a black bottle in his desk, at the neck of which he habitually refreshed himself before the whole school; and he addressed the children with an elaborate and caustic levity in a thin shaky voice quite twenty years too old for him.  His humour was thrown away upon the rising generation of Waddy, and might have been supposed to be the cat-like pawing of a vicious mind; but Joel Ham was not cruel, and although when occasion demanded he could use the cane with exceeding smartness, he frequently overlooked misdemeanours that might have justified an attack, and was never betrayed into administering unmerited cuts even when his black bottle was empty and his thirst most virulent.

In spite of his eccentricities and his weaknesses, and the fact that he was neither respected nor dreaded, Ham brought his scholars on remarkably well.  There were three big classes in the room—­first, third, and fifth—­and a higher and lower branch of each; he managed all, with the assistance of occasional monitors selected from the best pupils.  Good order prevailed in the school, for little that went on there escaped the master’s alert eye.  Even when he drowsed at his desk, as he sometimes did on warm afternoons, the work was not delayed, for he was known to have a trick of awakening with a jerk, and smartly nailing a culprit or a dawdler.

The school to-day was in a tense and excitable condition, now heightened to fever by the two cobwebbed mysteries standing against the wall, but the imperative rattle of Joel’s cane on the desk quickly induced a specious show of industry.

‘Gable!’

The individual addressed, a big scholar in the Lower Third, was so absorbed in the spectacle provided by Haddon and McKnight that he failed to hear the master’s voice, and continued staring stupidly with all his eyes.

‘Gable!  This way, my dear child.’

Gable started guiltily, and then fell into confusion.  He climbed awkwardly, out of his seat, and advanced hesitatingly with shuffling feet towards the master.  It was now evident that Gable was not a large boy, but a little old man, slightly built, with a round ruddy clean-shaven face and thick white hair.  But his manner was that of a boy of eight.

‘Hold out, my young friend!’ Joel commanded, with an expressive flourish of his cane.